A Palestinian boy holds a rifle-shaped wooden stick during a graduation ceremony for the first group of school children's military training organized by Hamas education ministry in Gaza City, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. (More than 3,000 Palestinian teenagers on Thursday graduated from the ruling Hamas militant group’s first high school military training program in the Gaza Strip, displaying mock weapons, crawling commando-style on the ground and taking up fighting positions for thousands of cheering supporters. AP Photo/Adel Hana)

TheDC Morning: We found the Friends of Hamas

1.) The real friends of Hamas — We found friends of Hamas — and their views are troubling. Meet Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, two of the Iranian regime’s biggest apologists in the U.S. TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein opines:

“If you think you and your wife have been unfairly tainted as the leading academic apologists for the Iranian regime in the United States, you probably don’t want to close an event for your new book by recounting a fond memory from one of your multiple encounters with the leader of an Iranian-funded Palestinian terror group. ‘I remember the very first time we met Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas,’ Flynt Leverett said at the end of an event for he and his wife’s new book, ‘Going to Tehran,’ at the Center for the National Interest in Washington Thursday. ‘And he said to us that he and his colleagues pray everyday that they can see facts as they are. And I always thought that is the ultimate realists’ prayer: God give me the strength to see facts as they are.’ … The two like to call themselves realists, but their rhetoric suggest they are less realists and more advocates for the Iranian regime.”

No, these aren’t the Friends of Hamas, just friends of Hamas. Or at least acquaintances. And they don’t have much to do with Chuck Hagel, though TheDC Morning wouldn’t be shocked if he is a regular readers of theirs. In any case, read the full story.

“Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is becoming increasingly concerned about his 2014 re-election chances in Kentucky, according to a progressive super PAC that says it is partnering with unnamed tea party groups to paint McConnell as a corrupt insider and knock him out of his longtime Senate seat in a Republican primary. A recent McConnell campaign fundraising email accused liberals of ‘attempting to infiltrate conservative’ groups in Kentucky. Another McConnell campaign email accused the liberal organization MoveOn.org of supporting a ‘phony tea party’ in an attempt to beat the senior senator. Though MoveOn disputed the McConnell campaign’s charges, the progressive super PAC Progress Kentucky is openly waging the kind of attack that McConnell seems worried about.”

“Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he will send a $600,000 check to the U.S. Treasury, returning the part of his operating budget as a senator that was not spent. Paul made the announcement at press conference in Kentucky on Wednesday. According to a press release from Paul’s office, the sum is over 20 percent of the total operating budget. Last year, he returned $500,000 worth of unspent funds to the Treasury.”

“In a video blog post headlined ‘Happy Birthday, President Mugabe,’ CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour took time to commemorate the 89th birthday of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, the internationally reviled dictator who has led the once-prosperous country into near-total economic and humanitarian ruin. Despite the persistent allegations of horrifying human-rights abuses and crippling financial issues still plaguing Zimbabwe, Amanpour’s tribute to Mugabe’s 33 years of power was mostly positive.”

A happy day for Zimbabwe will be when its looter is no longer in charge. Let the day be soon. Anyway, what was CNN thinking?